Envisat’s satellite failure launches mysteries

I’ve been watching with interest and concern some of Steve Goddard’s postings on Envisat on the abrupt changes in their recent sea level data. To me, something didn’t seem quite right, and I expressed concerns privately along those lines that I didn’t know the causes of what appear to be recent unexplained “adjustments” in the recent data. It seems ENVISAT has given up the ghost. So, it is possible it has been sending faulty data and they have not noticed. Here, he shows this graph which seems quite problematic:

This is like what has happened with the AQUA AMSRE failure and the failure that we had to point out to NSIDC (where Dr. Walt Meier famously exclaimed it “wasn’t worth blogging about” only to have to later issue corrections themselves) that the DMSP satellite they were using had issues. Whether this is permanent or not remains to be seen. After 10 years of service, Envisat has stopped sending data to Earth. ESA’s mission control is working to re-establish contact with the satellite.

I read in the news today that connections have been lost with the Envisat satellite. ESA has already confirmed it too, but reading the latest Mission Operations News, it seems it would be predicted for a satellite that had only been planned for a five year mission.

So I ran to see how the sea level graphs had finished, and to my biggest surprise, the graph from AVISO had changed dramatically! I recall seeing it about a week ago, with totally different values! From an historical perspective, several older graphs can be seen in a post 9 months ago (in Portuguese), or compared with other satellite measurements in this WUWT post. Please compare the graph 9 months ago on the left, and the more recent one on the right (click to zoom):

Notice that the slope has gone up from 0.76 mm/year to 2.33 mm/year! This manipulation, which has no other name, has been justified by Aviso with the following notes:

Now, this looks like a small part of the Envisat mystery. Please check that the older graph starts in 2004, but the newer graph starts in mid 2002! Notice that in the newer graph, the 2002 and 2003 values were much higher that those of 2004, and that the highest values of 2003 were not surprassed till late 2008. Now imagine why they were not there in the older graphs, and how being there would create a trend probably very near to ZERO!

The last image, the above one on the right, that’s on the AVISO site is dated “Tue, 10 Apr 2012 09:14:03 GMT”, so clearly has been put there after the satellite failed, which occurred last Sunday. No doubt that the hiding the decline was already planned, but probably was executed swiftly after the fail. Strangely, the last color image taken by the satellite was above Portugal, which is obviously a coincidence. But it looks like it’s mysteries have only started…

125 thoughts on “Envisat’s satellite failure launches mysteries”

Does it need another 49 scientists/astronauts to write a short concise letter pointing out that they shouldn`t do this ?
Perhaps people will start comparing the effects of Climate Change to the effects of Nitrous Oxide.

Perhaps we should stop taking as “data” results that come out of satellites that use revolutionary cutting edge technology, and as such are bound to see their figures corrected again and again. Plus we all know which way the corrections always go, for climate stuff.

Should we really trust a satellite measurement….that can only get it’s measurements through adjustments?

First 22 passes, Envisat said sea levels were falling..they didn’t believe it…so they tuned it to Jason…then when they drifted again….they tuned Jason to Envisat….
….each time to show more sea level rise of course

I would think a satellite would fall out of orbit….which would mean adjusting in the other direction….

Look. I can assure you that sea level around these parts has not risen since the 70’s when I first came here, unless these parts are a rising land mass.

Sometimes with a spring tide and a south wester we get levels above the predicted and at other times we get levels below the predicted but on the whole the local wharf costructed in the 19th centuary is not under any pressure.

When the governement changes – and it will, all over the world – and we get some sensible people in power, let’s make sure they take a look at these government organizations and CLEAN OUT THE TRASH. Extemists have not only infiltrated these organizations but have risen high in them. That is where they will remain hiding, waiting, plotting, and spitting out more of this nonsense in the bid for another catastrophe. We have to get these destructive people OUT.

Wilt: probably because ice levels are rising again. Basicall AGW CANNOT under any conditions have NH ice normal or above normal its been (the theoretical melting), the star of AGW After years of monitoring CT, DMI, and the rest I’ve notice long pauses with ice data when it tends to reach or go above normal. Just be on the watch for more manipulations down.

Doesn’t AVISO mean warning? Global warning? As in someone’s
been cooking the climate books again? How can a satellite be
dodgy for almost four years and no one notice it? (Sorry if I
misread the graphs, but the output for the top graph seems to
go very wrong in 2008 – sort of an aquatic hockey stick….),,,

Makes me think of the movie Space Cowboys….time to clean
out NASA and get some real scientists back there (or clean up
the environment there so the real scientists are not throttled
by the politicians)…sad…current lot couldn’t get us to the moon
and back if they had to…

Scientists say that Envisat also brought good news: a recent study of the Antarctic ozone hole showed the hole closing. Mission managers said that the improvement in the hole proved the value of government regulation of flurocarbons.

Uh-oh. It gave evidence that further government control was not required. Now it’s gone. And the evidence can be “disappeared” as unreliable due to Envisat’s failing health.

A new series of environmental satellites, called Sentinels, are intended to replace Envisat. However, the first of them will launch no earlier than 2013.

Thus we have one of the greatest naming blunders in science that I hope gets corrected soon. As a recovering former long-term reader of Marvel Comics, I know I am far from alone in finding it unsettling that government entities will be launching Sentinels into space to monitor the Earth.

“The interruption of the Envisat service shows that the launch of the GMES Sentinel satellites, which are planned to replace Envisat, becomes urgent,” said Volker Liebig, ESA’s Director of Earth Observation Programmes.

‘The amount of floating ice in the Arctic’s Bering Sea – which had long been expected to retreat disastrously by climate-Cassandra organisations such as Greenpeace – reached all-time record high levels last month, according to US researchers monitoring the area using satellites.

The US National Snow and Ice Data Center announced last week that ice extent in the Bering for the month of March has now been collated and compared, and is the highest seen since records began.

…

The NSIDC boffins add, however that overall the Arctic ice – while up on recent years – is below the average seen since records began in 1979. In fact, according to the Cryosphere Today website run by the Polar Research group at Illinois uni, it’s down by 443,000 square km. However the sea ice around the Antarctic coasts is above average by 452,000 km2, so overall the planet’s sea ice is at the moment slightly above average in extent – and in the Bering Sea, the walruses, seals and polar bears can quite literally chill out in comfort. ®’

All satellite data has to be ‘processed’ – that’s a given, I presume? – but wouldn’t it be more appropriate to have at least two or three independent teams doing the ‘processing’ ? Do they do this? I don’t know – but the bottom line is that he who controls the satellite and data processing, surely controls the ‘findings’. Note, I am not a conspiracy theorist as such – but when stuff like temp data adjustments, station losses, etc, etc and now this – it doesn’t command much faith!

I wouldn’t put it past them to have shot down the messenger (satellite) so they could rewrite the data to better fit their models. Wasn’t there a mysterious burning object recently that was identified as space junk on re-entry?

Both hotlinks “Envisat V2.1 GDR reprocessed data used. The new standards are also detailed in the table “Processing and corrections”.” give a 404 error. It just seems strange that it takes all this time to prpoerly calibrate a not inexpensive system like this. My guess is this adjustment has a greater error then what it is they are attmepting to correct.

Could someone with the appropriate computer skills resize and align the two graphs so the changes are easier to compare. Steve’s graph from the first link seems to have been resized but for some reason he chose to only align the horizontal axis.

Also, while the changes are dramatic and the typical lack of clear explanation frustrating, an eyeball look at the Colorado data would suggest that since 2002, this new interpretation of the Envirosat data is actually much closer then it was before the adjustments.

Even if there was some kind of drift in the readings it is hard to see how this could introduce any kind of significant error. Weren’t the constantly calibrating sea levels to their measured land elevations? What else would they be calibrating to? And if they were calibrating to the land then any drift would be compensated for in real time, whether it came from orbital decay or from sensor drift.

What am I missing? This kind of major reanalysis would seem to be well outside the bounds of any reasonable adjustment unless they are saying that they had their whole calculational scheme was way off from the beginning. I see no way that it could be a legitimate compensation for any kind of decay. It would have to be a decay that affected measurements over the sea but not the land. Is that even possible?

‘The amount of floating ice in the Arctic’s Bering Sea – which had long been expected to retreat disastrously by climate-Cassandra organisations such as Greenpeace – reached all-time record high levels last month, according to US researchers monitoring the area using satellites.

The US National Snow and Ice Data Center announced last week that ice extent in the Bering for the month of March has now been collated and compared, and is the highest seen since records began.

…

The NSIDC boffins add, however that overall the Arctic ice – while up on recent years – is below the average seen since records began in 1979. In fact, according to the Cryosphere Today website run by the Polar Research group at Illinois uni, it’s down by 443,000 square km. However the sea ice around the Antarctic coasts is above average by 452,000 km2, so overall the planet’s sea ice is at the moment slightly above average in extent – and in the Bering Sea, the walruses, seals and polar bears can quite literally chill out in comfort. ®’ ”

Have i violated a policy or something?

[REPLY – Sounds like a clear case of violating the policy of only posting when a moderator is checking. ~ Evan]

[Reply #2: Your comment has now been posted twice. Sometimes WordPress will assign a comment to the Spam folder if it even has one link. We don’t check the Spam folder nearly as often as we approve comments. ~dbs, mod.]

Going to archive.org shows someminor changes in the way they read the slope. In 2008 they started the list at 1997 at about 2cm, the current one starts at zero. The slope is much the same at 3.052 vs 3.17. I don’t have time to look further, but if anyone is interested here is the link

I didn’t overlay it like Steve did, but sometimes its easier to see. The ones I generated didn’t have any of the idiotic corrections in there including the seasonal adjustment so the sine waves are easier to see.

Anthony, you’re more than welcome if you wish to use them as well.

@ TomRude
Yes, it is an intriging read. They are clearly obsessed with coming in line with Jason I , after they adjusted Jason. We also see Jason 2 has been quiet since Jan 25 and had it already shows some incredulous trending.

@ John from CA…….
Yes, I still have all of the original data sets I downloaded from PSMSL on two separate PCs. I went back and check both.

Like Anthony, I usually attribute stuff like this to incompetence….. but this is too much. I think Steve is correct. This is done in preparation to the IPCC 5.

This manipulation, which has no other name,
——–
It does have another name. It’s called a correction.
================================================
LT, you’re a bright guy….. tell me, what are the odds that the “corrections” always seem to run in one direction? GISS, HadCrut, Sea Levels….. if the corrections are indeed unbiased fixes for problematic data, wouldn’t the direction of the corrections be more evenly distributed?

LT, it isn’t about the climate. It is about people willing to accept history revisionism. We can debate climate and its considerations and meanings. But, when we, as a society accept that what was, wasn’t, and what is may not be, we’ve all lost. And we’ve all lost everything. If observations are not the observations when we observe them then we can know nothing.

Try and understand the deeper meaning to these things. All science is invalidated by a fluid and dynamic historical observations. Not just skeptical science, not just climate science….. all science.

“This manipulation, which has no other name,
——–
It does have another name. It’s called a correction.”

NO! A “correction” is a change to reported data to account for secondary data measured, justified, and reported. “correction” is NOT another name for “manipulation”,

Manipulation is another name for “doctoring the data”, “cooking the books”, or “lying” in an attemot to induce a reader to believe the false is true, or to iduce the reader to take actions that no sane, informed person would take.

[Aside: I too have been angry in the conviction that my pearls of wisdom are being surpressed. In every case, I think, I have run afoul of the fact that the moderators are unpaid volunteers whose humanity is displayed by needs to be elswhere sometimes, doing other things sometimes. I wish it was not so, because what I have to say is usually so inprtant the any delay is to be avoided, I am now comfortable in the belief that they will never deliberately and silently drop a comment to the floor. They would not miss the opportyunity to show me the error of my ways.]

Kevin in UK says
but the bottom line is that he who controls the satellite and data processing, surely controls the ‘findings’.
———–
So does that theory explain the UAH satellite output? I’m sure Roy and John would like that satellite temperature trend to go down. But it’s not.

LazyTeenager says:
April 12, 2012 at 4:59 pm
It does have another name. It’s called a correction.
==============================================
roaring laughing………….
These satellites fall out of orbit….that means measurements degrade in the opposite direction of their “adjustments”……………

I still favor using GPS satellites and data from CORS (Continuously Operating Reference Stations) per Woppelmann, et al. The vertical measurements are the least accurate but GPS satellites and CORS stations aren’t controlled by climatologists. It’s replicable and irrefutable data.

The 2 graphs provided by Ecotretas differ in so many respects that it is hard to believe they came from the same data set! This was not a ‘correction’…a simple fix to a couple of typos or a uniform adjustment to accomodate ‘sensor drift’. If it was, the underlying trends would still be recognizable. Without explicit definition of the adjusting algorythm(s) or a one-to-one mapping of the ‘adjustments’ made to each data point with comments why the ‘adjustments’ were necessary, the possibility of willful fraud is strongly recommended!
MtK

Louis Hooffstetter says:
April 12, 2012 at 5:37 pm
I still favor using GPS satellites and data from CORS (Continuously Operating Reference Stations) per Woppelmann, et al. The vertical measurements are the least accurate but GPS satellites and CORS stations aren’t controlled by climatologists. It’s replicable and irrefutable data.
===========
Absolutely, with a time-stamp and datum.

I hope so, but I’m not sure. Lazy Teenager appears to be a wannabe climatologist cut from the same cloth as William M. Connolly: long on snark and sarcasm, but woefully short on logical, defensible science.

Lazy T: we don’t mind you posting here, but you have to back up your sarcastic potshots with reproducible empirical data.

This fraud is getting ridiculous. Isn’t there supposed to be a body that watches out for this sort of thing? The FBI or your National Security mob? Over here in Australia, ASIO is keeping an eye on the greens. That’s good (it’s a start). They MUST know what’s going on. I sure hope these agencies don’t just sit back and take notes while our countries go down the drain.

How do we appeal for a wide and thorough investigation? The warmists are hiding behind a massive mountain of paper, believing no doubt that enough of it will convince the world that they must be right. Do we have to wait for elections to stop this? This is criminal, right here and right now. There must be someone other than the President or Prime Minister able to call for an inquiry into the broad scope of this nonsense.

Lazy T: we don’t mind you posting here, but you have to back up your sarcastic potshots with reproducible empirical data.
====================================
You are wrong-minded.
” lazy t” draws out the best of WUWT.
And is a glutton for punishment, don’t deprive us./

This suggests that some of the time the satellite was over land they thought it was over water and vice versa. Since the sea level calculations only look at the data from when they think the satellite is over water and measuring sea height, and because land is always higher than sea,
the sea-level estimate that results from this confusion would be systematically biased towards higher-than-actual sea levels. So if this is really the mistake they made, the adjustment should have LOWERED sea-level estimates, not jacked them up.

The last slope, 2.33 millimeters/year, is very nearly correct. The value that Chao, Yu, and Li obtained in 2008 (Science, April 11th, 2008) was 2.46 millimeters/year. They examined all the available data on sea level rise and corrected it for water held in storage by dams built since the year 1900. After correction the sea level curve became linear for at least 80 years. In my judgement something that has been linear that long is not likely to change anytime soon. It looks like the sea level rise is still on course as determined by Chao, Yu, and Li. It amounts to a little under ten inches per century.

James Sexton says:
April 12, 2012 at 5:12 pm
….. if the corrections are indeed unbiased fixes for problematic data, wouldn’t the direction of the
corrections be more evenly distributed?
===========
or why would they go back and “adjust” past tide gauge measurements? in fits and spurts…
…for one thing, if it’s justified, it would be an even adjustment all the way up to the present
it’s not, it’s a very convenient adjustment to show sea levels rising, when they weren’t before

Why could possibly be their reason for adjusting historical old tide gauge readings….but only bits and pieces of them…

It is interesting and probably a technological breakthrough that satellites can now create matter. This might be useful if they could create energy as well. The amount of water just created is a cube about 16.8km on a side. Enough to fill the grand canyon more than once, or the Superdome 1.3 million times. Considering that it was done in just a few clock cycles of a computer, it rivals only the theory of the self propagating inflationary universe in terms of speed. The shock wave must have been something to behold. Now that’s what a space agency is for. Damn impressive ESA.

“tell me, what are the odds that the “corrections” always seem to run in one direction?”

Well, so far, 100%.

Look, it’s become clear that the reason the errors are running in one direction only has to do with dishonest data, pure and simple. If the measured raw data wasn’t being wrongfully altered at some point, we wouldn’t need all of these corrections. We don’t like to make these corrections any more than you like to see them.

But now, finally, we’ve discovered what’s been going on. We’ve found the source of spurious data. And the blame for what has been happening rests squarely on the shoulders of you Deniers, whose irrational screaming repetition of anti-science lies has had its ultimate intended effect. Your screaming incoherence has paid off for you. You’ve acheived the ultimate corruption.

Gaia has become a Denier.

The Earth itself has fallen for the lies put out by the Watts of the world. She now answers our queries with false, spurious, near-hostile data. We go to measure the temperature of water, and the water cools before we can finish. We examine sea levels, and the levels drop just as we reach the dock. We view the extent of Antarctic ice, and the solid frozen edge forms and spreads before we can focus our cameras. At times, we can almost hear her laugh at us.

You’ve taken our innocent, pristine, virginal Earth and corrupted her – turned her into a lying harlot hanging around street corners with a cigarette hanging from the corner of her heavily lipsticked mouth, available to any and all takers with a few oil-bucks and a smooth “you don’t look so hot to me” line.

That is an IP owned by cloudflare. It is a service that improves performance of web sites by caching often retreived pages. It also filters out spammers and such from ever even getting to the target web page, It is not a malicious operation.

Isn’t it interesting that every time some relevant time series is adjusted, for whatever purpose, the trend change always supports warming. How many times in a row does one see “heads” on a coin toss before realizing a two-headed coin is in play?

That is an IP owned by cloudflare. It is a service that improves performance of web sites by caching often retreived pages. It also filters out spammers and such from ever even getting to the target web page, It is not a malicious operation.

Larry
173.245.60.41
Steve’s site has some strange things happening sometimes. I had 3 computers that would not reload fresh pages, only got old ones. For a week. And now the pages act like they never finish even though they are done. This could be the culprit. I’ll block it and see if it gets better. Thanks.

or why would they go back and “adjust” past tide gauge measurements? in fits and spurts…
============================================
I’ll be digging into it as soon as I end my lamitations. ……..
For those who don’t understand, it’s a hard thing to devote some time and energy to a project and hit severval brick walls….. so many that you finally say “it can’t be done”. ….. Only to find out afterwards, they went back and updated sites which hadn’t been updated in over two years.

Data had ended in 2008 and 2009….. only to find they’ve infilled all the data in 2012. Oddly, the very few stations I looked at showed an amazing increase in sealevel measurements after the infill. In spite of Envisat’s “adjustments” this is still incongruent to the time period. For those that wish, they can go to the archives of my site…… I gave periodical updates to the progress and findings as I went along. I had hoped that was one place not tainted by this insidious disease. For reasons I understand, I’m hesitant to look much further. But, I will.

I used to say such data corruption and manipulation to get the desired result (always, always!) in favor of more global warming, sea level rise, etc. was sad. It is more than that. For more than 3 centuries almost all scientists searched for truth and treated data as invaluable and a sin to corrupt. But then the Soviet Union and Lysenko showed the way. Our university and government scientists are overwhelmingly leftists and if it was good enough for Stalin it is now seems good enough for them. As Lord Monckton said, losing our reason is losing our spark of divinity.

I am more than sad for an irretrievable loss, i fear we will never return scientists to the role they once played. God help us.

‘The amount of floating ice in the Arctic’s Bering Sea – which had long been expected to retreat disastrously by climate-Cassandra organisations

There’s a better term than “warmist”!
Warmist is too broad, as it includes non-alarmists.
“Alarmist” is too accusatory–it prejudges the case, implying the other side is wrong.
“Cassandra” is just right, as the ancient Cassandra was correct, but subsequent doomsters who see themselves as “Cassandra’s” are ego-driven and have a bad track record.
(Just remember to spell it with two S’s.)

This is for one and all. The word “its” is the possessive pronoun and “it’s” is the contraction for “it is”.
==================================================
toni! You must understand, even if we know this…….. some of us still get too drunk to care! It’s not that we don’t care once we’re sober. Regret lingers for years! Regret it must be, because we know once this happens, we are entirely misconstrued! Meaning gets thrown to the wayside and all is lost, save for the pendantic. :-)

Folks, if the instruments miles and miles above our heads go off kilter, it’s not a conspiracy of the IPCC zombies to inflate AR5. Pachurri predicted that a year ago.
What is the AR5 cut off date for published papers acceptable for discussion? Anyone? Granted they’ve played fast and loose with that cutoff before and probably will again. Please tone down the conspiracy rhetoric when a simpler explanation is available:

Maybe the damn thing never worked as intended. Not the first time that’s happened in space flight.

I’m becoming increasingly concerned about the nature and extent of ALL so called ‘adjustments’ to the whole range of available empirical data including proxy data.

Having previously accepted the reality of some apparent warming, especially during the late 20th century, it now seems prudent to disbelieve evidence of anything other than a slow recovery from the LIA due to natural internal climate system processes with perhaps a basic background trend supplied by small changes in solar activity levels over the centuries since the LIA.

Personally I think that all we have seen is a slight redistribution of the in/out energy flows across the globe with little or no real change in the climate system’s basic energy content.

Anything is possible says: April 12, 2012 at 1:54 pm
360 000 000 km^2 of ocean in constant motion due to tides, winds and currents, and they claim to be able to measure mean sea level to an accuracy of 1/1000mm
.
That is 5 times more accurate than is achieved with a co-ordinate measuring machine under laboratory conditions at a constant 68°F/20°C.

“Alarmist” is too accusatory–it prejudges the case, implying the other side is wrong.

They ARE wrong, at least in that they are overstating their case while intentionally omitting the overwhelming evidence that points in the opposite direction. There is much more reason to be worried about cooling than warming.

Of course it is always possible that the planet will warm dangerously, but if it does, it won’t be on any grounds that the alarmists have put down any evidence for, because they haven’t offered any evidence for anything. They avoid the evidence, or “re-adjust” it, as the case may be.

“Anti-CO2 alarmists” is the term I usually use. Nice and short compared to “believers in dangerous human caused global warming,” or some such.

By chance I also downloaded data from aviso.oceanobs last weekend.
I thought it would be interesting to look at rate of rise from different satellites during periods when they both operating. Surprise Surprise, clearly show that rate of rise has slowed and that there used to be agreement between results from Poseidon and Envisat during period when they were both operational.

After I read James Sexton’s comment I downloaded data again and compared results.

By making the change to get Envisat to agree with Poseidon/Topex overall they’ve messed up the agreement in some of the overlapping periods.

There was a big dip in sealevels (around UK at least) in 1990, so maybe sea levels did rise at 3mm/year until 2000, but this was just reversion to mean, not a permanent change.

It appears that they are not just increasing the recent data, but are decreasing the old. Please notice how 2004, 05 and 06 were all fairly flat at 48.5, and now the roll along at about 46.75. The pivot point appears to be about 2008.

toni arco says:
April 12, 2012 at 8:51 pm
This is for one and all. The word “its” is the possessive pronoun and “it’s” is the contraction for “it is”.

Toni – you must be a 50 year old curmudgeon like me! Plural, Possessive, Possessive Plural – why does everyone find it so hard to get this. On the other hand, there is a school in the UK called “The Haberdashers’ Aske’s School for Girls” – What does it mean, I can’t work it out!

[snip. Ad hominem attack on our host. ~dbs, mod.]——–
LT is correct — another name is “adjustment”. The Occam’s Razor explanation for the accelerating convergence of such adjustments is the following chain of scientific reasoning:

• the theory of radiation transport really is correct, and so
• CO2 really is a greenhouse gas, and therefore
• the oceans really are warming and the ice is melting, so that
• sea level really is rising, and moreover
• the rise-rate really is increasing, which
• satellites of every nation really see this rise more-and-more clearly,
• precisely as James Hansen and his colleagues predict, and
• all of these trends are destined to accelerate in coming years.

These are sound physical theories, verifiable observations, and testable predictions … and so there’s no need to introduce “enemy list” factionalism and “witch hunt” politics in assessing this chain of reasoning.

• the theory hypothesis of radiation transport really is may be correct, and so
• CO2 really is a [very minor and insignificant] greenhouse gas, and therefore
• the oceans really are [not] warming and the ice is [not] melting [global ice cover is increasing, not decreasing], so that
• sea level really is rising [very slowly, and moreover
• the rise-rate really is increasing [absolutely false], which
• satellites of every nation really see this rise more-and-more clearly [wrong again]
• precisely as James Hansen and his colleagues [incorrectly] predicted, and
• all of these trends are destined to accelerate in coming years [says your crystal ball?].

These are physical theoriesconjectures, [un]verifiable observations, and [un]testable predictions … and so there’s no need to introduce “enemy list” factionalism and “witch hunt” politics in assessing this chain of reasoning.

. . .

There, Bernie. Fixed it for you.

BTW, where do you get your nonsensical talking points? From Pseudo-Skeptical Pseudo-Science? Or Closed Mind? Or RealClimatePropaganda? The UN/IPCC? Tamina? Bernie, your “facts” are wrong. Stick around here at the internet’s Best Science site. You will learn the truth… if your mind isn’t closed tight.

Anything is possible says: April 12, 2012 at 1:54 pm
360 000 000 km^2 of ocean in constant motion due to tides, winds and currents, and they claim to be able to measure mean sea level to an accuracy of 1/1000mm

old44 says:
That is 5 times more accurate than is achieved with a co-ordinate measuring machine under laboratory conditions at a constant 68°F/20°C.

A high end Zeiss CMM has a linear accuracy of .0015mm. Mine is .003, which is still quite good. I chuckle at many claimed accuracies by climate scientists of their measurements, The same for the error bars. 25 years in the Metrology business has taught me uncertainity is not a law no matter how convincing the math may look.

Bernie Schreiver says:
April 13, 2012 at 5:58 am
“LT is correct — another name is “adjustment”. The Occam’s Razor explanation for the accelerating convergence of such adjustments is the following chain of scientific reasoning:”

Occam’s razor tells me that the simplest explanation for the international scientific misconduct in CAGW climate scientist circles are covert operations by somebody who has a lot of natgas to sell.

Although the X-axis is aligned on the overlaid graphs from realscience, not having the y-axis to scale bothered me. I notice the the ealier plot I overlaid here, from the above article, is not the same plot Steve Goddard used from Nov. 2011. None-the-less, it makes it easy to see how the y-axis is radically changed.

Having a quick scan around this site it is hard to see how the MSL is supposed to be going up a 3mm/yr.

Many have been flat for last 25years, many in Scandinavia and Alaska go down and only few go up. Even allowing for some regions rising the avereage would seem to be about half the 3mm/y figure.

It needs evaluating more precisely but my guess is that most of this difference will be due to _supposed_ rise in land levels , this being added to the *measured* SL rise. Once again, unverified computer models based of crude, back of envelop, guesses at mantel rebound are being used to frig the data.

Stephen Wilde says:
April 12, 2012 at 11:47 pm
“I’m becoming increasingly concerned about the nature and extent of ALL so called ‘adjustments’ to the whole range of available empirical data including proxy data.”

I fear Stephen has valid points. I got very mixed feelings when I tried to compute backwards the sea level rise.
The idea was to use the data as published in each year at UC and compute the total rise from begging 1993 – to the year when it was published based on the number of years and the communicated sea level rise.
Based on some older links from Ecotreras and WUWT I was able to go back to 2004:http://suyts.wordpress.com/2012/04/10/sea-level-rises-to-new-lows/#comment-8489
Here are the values:
2012 – is shown to be same as 2011 = 50.4 it goes below the line
2011 = 50.4
2010 = 52.7
2009 = 51.2
2008 = 49.5
2007 = 49
so pretty stable since 2007
2006 = 41.6
2005 = 37.2
2004 = 33
Now what is more disturbing here is that the 2006-2008 period is shown as a very stable period in 2008 sea level with almost the same value 2006, 2007 and 2008.
If 8 mm increase would have been measured in that year there should have been a communication about it and not shown as same level.https://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/04/06/sea-level-graphs-from-uc-and-some-perspectives/
Thus the 7.4 mm increase in 2007 is highly suspect to me. Could it be resulting from an adjustment to the whole data 1993-2007? I could not clearly define where does it come from, maybe will find the answer later.
And then the stupid question comes, if this was an adjustment, how many such adjustments which increased the rise have been done before in this sea level rise satellite graph?

What everybody needs to understand is that the satallites are actually causing the sea levels to rise. Maybe its a gravitational thing, but I think it is a conspiracy. Coastal cities are doomed unless NASA can be stopped

Given the status and rather unreliable nature of satellites, I think we should simply revert to only tide gauges for increase/decrease in sea levels. Afterall, the only important metric is how sea level is changing relative to the land. GIA is a bogus correction when correcting for relative land/sea level changes. Im sure the fish in the ocean could care less about whether their swimming pool is getting shallower or deeper by up to 3mm per year.
TIde gauges are showing way less than 3mm/yr sea level rise. They were much more in line with the orginal Envisat data, prior to these recent data “corrections”.

Well I’ve just about done the rounds there and the only site that get’s to show more than an adjusted satellite rise in sea level is one in just about the most unstable geological region in the world, the Pacific ring of fire.

Someone needs to have a much closer look at where the sea is actually rising. Even the one extreme case I found has been dropping since 2004.

My impression from this quick world tour survey is that the only way they can get the sort of MSL sea rise they are presenting is but adding a sack load of GAIA adjustment to the data.

Degradation in data collection could have been happening slowly over time. I fried my mother board on my laptop. But it took a year to fry it. Kept getting slower and slower, then one day it just went *. I would not blindly trust this data past the first 5 years.

2.33 mm/year? Big deal. Anybody thinks we’re all going to drown in 20 cm additional seawater by 2100?
Here I really rather believe it’s because of better re-evaluation of satellite’s orbital parameters than due to any evil intentions.

The AGW dogma REQUIRES there to be potential for catastrophic increases in sea level. There cannot be a situation where data shows sea levels not rising. With all the money on the AGW side, there should be no surprise about these kind of ‘corrections’. Corruption is now at the heart of almost ALL scientific institutes. In the end it will come crashing down, but by then the damage to ‘science’ will have been done and the damage for future generations is incalculable.

That’s a very good point. An acceleration may be concordant with an additional forcing in the system. Steady rise or decelerating rise shows settling to a new equilibrium after a change in conditions.

It is clear that the latest adjustments are just another desperate attempt to “deny” the fact that the late 20th c. rise was cyclic and we are now on the down side of that hump.

SST shows it, sea level shows it, arctic ice cover shows. Yet the more the data shows what is happening the more previously unaccounted for “biases” are found and “corrected”.
They are just hoping to maintain the fallacy long enough to enslave the western world their $100bn PER YEAR funding for UN and World Bank

That’s like what US treasury gave to bail out the banks, but each year every year from 2020 onwards.

If we want to worry about the world our children will inherit that’s what we should be looking at.

Even if the entire Envisat data is suspect I cannot understand how the Aviso organization can extract millimeter precision or accuracy from satellite altimetry data. The best error budget for precise altitude determination has to be on the order of centimeters. To claim that they can
provide sea level accuracy to a millimeter or so implies that they can determine the altitude of
each satellite to a similar precision. Other satellite systems are more closely monitored than the
altimetry mission systems [gps for instance]. The precise altitude of a gps satellite is not known to millimeter precision.

Until I can see the complete error budget of the satellites Aviso uses to determine sea surface height to millimeter precision, I will have a hard time believing the precision or accuracy of any of their data.